Newsstand: Probably the Best iPhone News Reader

RSS is a great way to read news, especially if reading news is your job. Until recently, I used NewNewsWire, on both the desktop and an iPod Touch (handy for starting work while still in bed), but a recent (and rather sudden) death of the backend service meant I couldn’t keep the pair in sync. Enter Newsstand for iPhone, recently updated to v2.0 and probably the best mobile RSS reader I have used.

Newsstand syncs with Google Reader, as does the latest version of the NetNewsWire for the Mac. You can also subscribe to feeds by entering a URL (RSS feeds are automatically detected) or by importing an OPML file. Anything you do on one platform syncs to the other, which makes things pretty seamless.

Newsstand elegantly addresses one big shortcoming of the iPhone: shifting data around. On a computer, you can drag things from here to there, or save them for later. With the iPhone, you have to quit applications to do something else. Newsstand solves this by incorporating pop-up exporting to almost anywhere. You can email full articles (including pictures) from within the application (no quitting to go to the mail app) or add to Instapaper, Delicious, Twitter, ReadItLater or just copy the URL, all from a pop-up screen. Better, this option persists when you browse out to websites, meaning you can navigate to a linked article and send it to Instapaper to read, say, in a bar later.

But where Newsstand really shines is in the browsing. Everything, excepts pictures, syncs fast. I have hundreds of feeds and the whole list is updated in a minute or so. You can choose universal settings for downloading pictures, and also specify these settings for individual feeds. For instance, I have the low-traffic but high quality Strobist set to grab all photos on all posts. This is useful on the Touch as I often read off line.

Navigating is done per-feed, unlike another glossy reader, Byline, which offers no choice as to how much is downloaded from each feed, and in what order you get them. Mark as read is quick, and you can delete and re-order feeds in bulk.

Hit the little button in the title bar and you get the snazzy newspaper view, which gives a virtual newsstand, browsable with a neat cube-flipping animation. It’s gimmicky, and not nearly as utilitarian as the list view, but it’s certainly fun.

There’s more. You can subscribe to your own Twitter timeline, a Twitter search, or even various inputs from Delicious. There’s a built-in directory for popular feeds (although Gadget Lab isn’t in there, yet) that lets you browse by category and even shows you what feeds you are already reading. In the two weeks I switched to Newsstand, it has made it into my iPod’s dock. In short, it is one of the best apps I have. If you’re an avid RSS-head, go buy it now. It’s just $5.